This 2002 book investigates the opportunities in building intelligent decision support systems offered by multi-agent distributed probabilistic reasoning. Probabilistic reasoning with graphical models, also known as Bayesian networks or belief networks, has become increasingly an active field of research and practice in artificial intelligence, operations research and statistics. The success of this technique in modeling intelligent decision support systems under the centralized and single-agent paradigm has been striking. Yang Xiang extends graphical dependence models to the distributed and multi-agent paradigm. He identifies the major technical challenges involved in such an endeavor and presents the results. The framework developed in the book allows distributed representation of uncertain knowledge on a large and complex environment embedded in multiple cooperative agents, and effective, exact and distributed probabilistic inference.

This text is a reprint of the seminal 1989 book Probabilistic Reasoning in Expert systems: Theory and Algorithms, which helped serve to create the field we now call Bayesian networks. It introduces the properties of Bayesian networks (called causal networks in the text), discusses algorithms for doing inference in Bayesian networks, covers abductive inference, and provides an introduction to decision analysis. Furthermore, it compares rule-base experts systems to ones based on Bayesian networks, and it introduces the frequentist and Bayesian approaches to probability. Finally, it provides a critique of the maximum entropy formalism. Probabilistic Reasoning in Expert Systems was written from the perspective of a mathematician with the emphasis being on the development of theorems and algorithms. Every effort was made to make the material accessible. There are ample examples throughout the text. This text is important reading for anyone interested in both the fundamentals of Bayesian networks and in the history of how they came to be. It also provides an insightful comparison of the two most prominent approaches to probability.

This book collects the refereed proceedings of the 8th Indian Conference on Logic and Its Applications, ICLA 2019, held in Delhi, India, in March 2019. The volume contains 13 full revised papers along with 6 invited talks presented at the conference. The aim of this conference series is to bring together researchers from a wide variety of fields in which formal logic plays a significant role. Areas of interest include mathematical and philosophical logic, computer science logic, foundations and philosophy of mathematics and the sciences, use of formal logic in areas of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence, logic and linguistics, and the relationship between logic and other branches of knowledge. Of special interest are studies in systems of logic in the Indian tradition, and historical research on logic.

Multiagent systems is an expanding field that blends classical fields like game theory and decentralized control with modern fields like computer science and machine learning. This monograph provides a concise introduction to the subject, covering the theoretical foundations as well as more recent developments in a coherent and readable manner. The text is centered on the concept of an agent as decision maker. Chapter 1 is a short introduction to the field of multiagent systems. Chapter 2 covers the basic theory of singleagent decision making under uncertainty. Chapter 3 is a brief introduction to game theory, explaining classical concepts like Nash equilibrium. Chapter 4 deals with the fundamental problem of coordinating a team of collaborative agents. Chapter 5 studies the problem of multiagent reasoning and decision making under partial observability. Chapter 6 focuses on the design of protocols that are stable against manipulations by self-interested agents. Chapter 7 provides a short introduction to the rapidly expanding field of multiagent reinforcement learning. The material can be used for teaching a half-semester course on multiagent systems covering, roughly, one chapter per lecture.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 25th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Canadian AI 2012, held in Regina, SK, Canada, in May 2013. The 17 regular papers and 15 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 73 initial submissions and are accompanied by 8 papers from the Graduate Student Symposium that were selected from 14 submissions. The papers cover a variety of topics within AI, such as: information extraction, knowledge representation, search, text mining, social networks, temporal associations.

The new edition of an introduction to multiagent systems that captures the state of the art in both theory and practice, suitable as textbook or reference. Multiagent systems are made up of multiple interacting intelligent agents—computational entities to some degree autonomous and able to cooperate, compete, communicate, act flexibly, and exercise control over their behavior within the frame of their objectives. They are the enabling technology for a wide range of advanced applications relying on distributed and parallel processing of data, information, and knowledge relevant in domains ranging from industrial manufacturing to e-commerce to health care. This book offers a state-of-the-art introduction to multiagent systems, covering the field in both breadth and depth, and treating both theory and practice. It is suitable for classroom use or independent study. This second edition has been completely revised, capturing the tremendous developments in multiagent systems since the first edition appeared in 1999. Sixteen of the book's seventeen chapters were written for this edition; all chapters are by leaders in the field, with each author contributing to the broad base of knowledge and experience on which the book rests. The book covers basic concepts of computational agency from the perspective of both individual agents and agent organizations; communication among agents; coordination among agents; distributed cognition; development and engineering of multiagent systems; and background knowledge in logics and game theory. Each chapter includes references, many illustrations and examples, and exercises of varying degrees of difficulty. The chapters and the overall book are designed to be self-contained and understandable without additional material. Supplemental resources are available on the book's Web site. Contributors Rafael Bordini, Felix Brandt, Amit Chopra, Vincent Conitzer, Virginia Dignum, Jürgen Dix, Ed Durfee, Edith Elkind, Ulle Endriss, Alessandro Farinelli, Shaheen Fatima, Michael Fisher, Nicholas R. Jennings, Kevin Leyton-Brown, Evangelos Markakis, Lin Padgham, Julian Padget, Iyad Rahwan, Talal Rahwan, Alex Rogers, Jordi Sabater-Mir, Yoav Shoham, Munindar P. Singh, Kagan Tumer, Karl Tuyls, Wiebe van der Hoek, Laurent Vercouter, Meritxell Vinyals, Michael Winikoff, Michael Wooldridge, Shlomo Zilberstein

This book constitutes the thoroughly reviewed post-proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Argumentation in Multi-Agent Systems, ArgMas 2011, held in Taipei, Taiwan in May 2011 in association with the 10th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2011). The 8 revised full papers taken from ArgMAS 2011. Also included are 5 invited papers based on presentations on argumentation at the AAMAS 2011 main conference. All together the 13 papers included in the book give a representative overview on current research on argumentation in multi-agent systems. The papers are listed alphabetically by first author within three thematic topics: foundations and theory; argumentation and dialogue; and applications.

Agents are software processes that perceive and act in an environment, processing their perceptions to make intelligent decisions about actions to achieve their goals. Multi-agent systems have multiple agents that work in the same environment to achieve either joint or conflicting goals. Agent computing and technology is an exciting, emerging paradigm expected to play a key role in many society-changing practices from disaster response to manufacturing to agriculture. Agent and mul- agent researchers are focused on building working systems that bring together a broad range of technical areas from market theory to software engineering to user interfaces. Agent systems are expected to operate in real-world environments, with all the challenges complex environments present. After 11 successful PRIMA workshops/conferences (Pacific-Rim International Conference/Workshop on Multi-Agents), PRIMA became a new conference titled “International Conference on Principles of Practice in Multi-Agent Systems” in 2009. With over 100 submissions, an acceptance rate for full papers of 25% and 50% for posters, a demonstration session, an industry track, a RoboCup competition and workshops and tutorials, PRIMA has become an important venue for multi-agent research. Papers submitted are from all parts of the world, though with a higher representation of Pacific Rim countries than other major multi-agent research forums. This volume presents 34 high-quality and exciting technical papers on multimedia research and an additional 18 poster papers that give brief views on exciting research.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th Mexican International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, MICAI 2009, held in Guanajuato, Mexico, in November 2009. The 63 revised full papers presented together with one invited talk were carefully reviewed and selected from 215 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on logic and reasoning, ontologies, knowledge management and knowledge-based systems, uncertainty and probabilistic reasoning, natural language processing, data mining, machine learning, pattern recognition, computer vision and image processing, robotics, planning and scheduling, fuzzy logic, neural networks, intelligent tutoring systems, bioinformatics and medical applications, hybrid intelligent systems and evolutionary algorithms.

Edited in collaboration with FoLLI, the Association of Logic, Language and Information, this book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Tbilisi Symposium on Logic, Language, and Computation, TbiLLC 2009, held in Bakuriani, Georgia, in September 2009. The 20 revised full papers included in the book were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous presentations given at the symposium. The focus of the papers is on the following topics: natural language syntax, semantics, and pragmatics; constructive, modal and algebraic logic; linguistic typology and semantic universals; logics for artificial intelligence; information retrieval, query answer systems; logic, games, and formal pragmatics; language evolution and learnability; computational social choice; historical linguistics, history of logic.